“Oh, dear Mrs. Churton, anything but that! I can't let you see it—I am so sorry! When Constance read it and began to speak angrily of Mary, I said to myself that no one should ever see it again.”
“Have you then destroyed it?”
“Oh, no,” she replied, involuntarily touching her bosom with her hand, “but I cannot show it.”
“Very well, Fan, let us say no more about it,” returned the other coldly, and withdrawing her arm from the girl's waist. And after a few moments of painful silence she rose and left the room.
Fan looking up met her friend's eyes fixed on her face. “Do you think Mrs. Churton is very angry with me, Constance?” she asked sadly.
“I think that she is offended. And surprised too, I believe.” Then she came nearer and took the girl's hand. “You have surprised me a great deal, I know. I am not yet quite sure that I understand your motives for refusing to show the letter. Perhaps your only reason was that you would not allow Miss Starbrow to be blamed at all—I am not questioning you. In any case you make me feel ashamed of myself. You have made me feel such a coward, and—it was a poor spiteful thing to say that I would tear up the notes and send them back to the giver.”
Fan made no reply, but stood with eyes cast down as if thinking of something else; and before long she made some excuse to go to her room, where she spent the rest of the day shut up by herself.
From that day a cloud rested on the ladies of Wood End House. Just when Nature called them to rejoice, when the sun laughed at the storm, and the blackbird fluted so loud in the orchard, and earth knew once more the glory of flowers, this great trouble had come on Fan, dimming the sweet visible world with a mist of tears. The poverty and toil which she must now face meant so much to her; day and night, at all times, the thought of it forced itself on her—the perpetual toiling for a bare subsistence, for bread to satisfy the cravings of hunger; the mean narrow, sordid, weary life, day after day, with no hope, no dream of joy to come; and worse than all, the evil things which she had seen and heard and were associated in her mind with the thought of poverty, all the things which made her old life seem like a hideous nightmare to her! The sunshine and flowers and the fluting of the blackbird, that would soon flute no more for her, could not drive this care from her heart; she was preoccupied, and silent, and sad, and Constance was sad from pure sympathy. Mrs. Churton, although still kind and even motherly in her manner, could not help showing that Fan's offence had not been forgotten; yet she loved the girl so well that she could not but feel the deepest pity for her and anxiety about her future. And she even still hoped to win her confidence.
“Fan,” she said one evening, when bidding her good-night, “you must not think that what passed the other day between us makes any difference with regard to my plans about your future. What I said to you then still holds good, and my home while I have one is your home.”
Fan knew very well that she might not accept this offer; she knew that the Churtons were poor and burdened with debt; and that even if it had not been so, after taking up an independent position in opposition to Mrs. Churton, she had no right to remain a day beyond the time for which payment had been made. All this in a faltering way she tried to explain to her kind friend, and Mrs. Churton confessed to herself that the girl took the right view. She made no further attempt to win her confidence or to make her change her mind; towards both Fan and her daughter she thereafter observed a somewhat cold and distant manner, grieving in her own heart, yearning over them in secret, but striving to hide it all from their eyes.